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How the storyline of Ohio’s primary election changed drastically in just six weeks

Six weeks ago the story was about how Ohio was set to join three other states in helping to end Bernie Sanders’ presidential dream.

Now it’s more about the process of how Ohioans were forced to cast ballots – and what that means for the November general election.

A burgeoning coronavirus outbreak caused a delay of the Buckeye State’s March 17 primary mere hours before polls were to open, and a string of defeats ushered Sanders out of the White House race without Ohio’s help.

So the unprecedented mostly-by-mail vote that concluded Tuesday presumably merely burnishes the crown of former Vice President Joe Biden as the Democrats’ presumptive nominee. President Donald Trump, who long ago clinched the GOP nod, was not opposed in Ohio.

While there was praise all around for elections workers who pulled off a revamped voting process in about a month, the new method set up by the legislation drew far from universal acclaim.

Voter confusion abounded about such fundamental matters as the date of the election and the multi-step process of obtaining an application for an absentee ballot, sending it in with proper postage, getting a ballot back, completing it, and returning it by Tuesday’s deadline.

Even after Tuesday’s vote tally is completed, many more votes remain to be counted in a process the legislature revamped after the March 17 in-person vote was called off. Any ballot that arrives in the mail by May 8 that was postmarked by Monday will be added to Tuesday’s totals.

State Rep. Niraj Antani, R-Miamisburg , tweeted a picture of an elections worker Tuesday who “tells me I need to make sure an election is never conducted in this manner again. I agree with him.”

Yet the legislature unanimously approved the vote-by-mail plan in late March, over objections to the timetable from voting rights groups and Secretary of State Frank LaRose.

Slow mail delivery impeded the process, meaning some voters who had asked for absentee ballots never got them by Tuesday’s deadline. LaRose’s office said an existing state election law could be used for voters in that situation to cast a provisional ballot at county elections board Tuesday.

But many questions remain among county elections officials about how to count those provisional ballots.

While the lines of people crowding outside of elections boards across Ohio apparently didn’t materialize as some feared, advocates still objected to making many Ohioans choose between their right to vote and staying safe during the pandemic.

Some are looking to Ohio – already the nation’s top presidential election bellwether – as a harbinger of how the November election could work if the coronavirus continues to plague the nation in six months.

Ohio Republicans, noting the state already has unlimited opportunities to mail in ballots in the month before an election, so far are resisting any change to a longstanding setup that culminates with an in-person vote on Election Day, Nov. 3 this year.

But Democratic Chairman David Pepper said the state needs to decide well before Labor Day if another election conducted almost entirely by mail is needed.

Ohioans must be educated much better and adequate money provided to counties to make sure they have the materials necessary to conduct such an election, Pepper said.

Despite the problems of the hastily arranged extended primary, at least it will get voters familiar with the process, he said.

“If we are in a situation in the fall that requires a massive vote-by-mail election as the only means or predominant means where people could vote, we did what we could to get voters acclimated,” Pepper said.